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CLASSICS 102L:Advanced Latin: Seneca (CLASSICS 209L)

As needed, we will review questions of grammar and syntax, rhetorical terms, and historical context. Classics majors and minors must take course for letter grade. May be repeated for credit with advance approval from the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

CLASSICS 103L:Advanced Latin: Tacitus

The greatest historian of the Roman empire, also wrote about its conquered people. Reading from Agricola and Germania, we will pay close attention to style and vocabulary, question possible sources, and ask what do these descriptions of faraway lands and cultures in turn tell us about Tacitus¿ Rome. Classics majors and minors must take course for a letter grade and may repeat for credit with advance approval from the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Gods and heroes, fate and free choice, gender conflict, the justice or injustice of the universe: these are just some of the fundamental human issues that we will explore in about ten of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can digital approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior experience necessary.

CLASSICS 125:The Hindu Epics and the Ethics of Dharma (RELIGST 123)

The two great Hindu Epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, offer a sustained reflection on the nature of virtuous living in the face of insoluble ethical dilemmas. Their treatment of the concept of dharma, understood simultaneously as ethical action and the universal order that upholds the cosmos, lies at the heart of both Gandhian non-violent resistance and communalist interreligious conflict. This course will focus on a reading of selections from the Epics in English translation, supplemented with a consideration of how the texts have been interpreted in South Asian literary history and contemporary politics and public life in India.

Last offered: Spring 2019
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

CLASSICS 130:The Grandeur of Epic: Poetry, Narrative, and World from Homer to Evolutionary Biology

Explores the mystery and power of epic. This ancient word, which at its root means "what is spoken," first classified certain traditions of archaic Greek poetry, especially Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. It now appears everywhere from slang to contemporary scientific discourse. Though some might dismiss its proliferation as an accident of everyday speech, the course will take the phenomenon of "epic" seriously, asking what it is about this oldest of genres that continues to inspire our collective imagination. Readings will include works of epic as well as theoretical and philosophical works on narrative, religion, and science. We will read substantial selections from the Iliad, Hesiod's poems, the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion, and Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea.

Last offered: Spring 2019
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 136:The Greek Invention of Mathematics

How was mathematics invented? A survey of the main creative ideas of ancient Greek mathematics. Among the issues explored are the axiomatic system of Euclid's Elements, the origins of the calculus in Greek measurements of solids and surfaces, and Archimedes' creation of mathematical physics. We will provide proofs of ancient theorems, and also learn how such theorems are even known today thanks to the recovery of ancient manuscripts.

Last offered: Autumn 2018
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

CLASSICS 145:Early Christian Gospels (RELIGST 132D)

An exploration of Christian gospels of the first and second century. Emphasis on the variety of images and interpretations of Jesus and the good news, the broader Hellenistic and Jewish contexts of the gospels, the processes of developing and transmitting gospels, and the creation of the canon. Readings include the Gospel of John, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary and other canonical and non-canonical gospels.

This lecture course explores Greek art and culture from 1000-480. In the beginning archaic art forms are more abstract than life-like, closer to Calder than Michelangelo. While Homer describes the rippling muscles (and egos) of his heroes, vase-painters and sculptors prefer abstraction. This changes in the 7th C. as a result of commerce with the Near East and Egypt. Imported Near Eastern bronzes and ivories awaken the Greeks to a wider range of subjects, techniques and ambitions. Later in the century, Greeks in Egypt learn to carve hard stone from Egyptian masters. Throughout the 6th C. Greek artists assimilate what they had borrowed, compete with one another, defy their teachers, test the tolerance of the gods and eventually produce works of art that speak with a Greek accent. When the Persians invade the Acropolis in 480, they find artifacts with little trace of alien influence or imprint - omens of the defiant Greek military that would prevail at Salamis and Plataea.